Jeanne Manford was my fourth-grade teacher. When in later life I learned she was an advocate for gay rights, it didn't surprise me. Aside from being a diligent, engaging teacher, she personified decency, democracy, and justice. My mother and I were on Welfare, a fact which ran afoul of a brutish administrator. It was the 1970s, and such a thing is unimaginable today, but I often suffered this person's invective in the halls and classrooms. Ms. Manford wouldn't allow it on her watch.
One open school day, my mother attended, despite trepidation about her clothes, her education, her status. To this day I see her sitting and smoking by the tall institutional windows, stoically following a lesson in progress, while my classmates smiled indulgently. To this day I see Ms. Manford grasping both my mother's hands. "You have a lovely boy there," she said. The afore-mentioned administrator had many adjectives for me, "lovely" wasn't one of them. I've written several stories about my hardships in that school, one published in a UK journal. If it hadn't been for Jeanne Manford, and subsequently others like her, I might've forever held my peace - or, a troubled silence.
Jeanne Manford was my fourth-grade teacher. When in later life I learned she was an advocate for gay rights, it didn't surprise me. Aside from being a diligent, engaging teacher, she personified decency, democracy, and justice. My mother and I were on Welfare, a fact which ran afoul of a brutish administrator. It was the 1970s, and such a thing is unimaginable today, but I often suffered this person's invective in the halls and classrooms. Ms. Manford wouldn't allow it on her watch.
One open school day, my mother attended, despite trepidation about her clothes, her education, her status. To this day I see her sitting and smoking by the tall institutional windows, stoically following a lesson in progress, while my classmates smiled indulgently. To this day I see Ms. Manford grasping both my mother's hands. "You have a lovely boy there," she said. The afore-mentioned administrator had many adjectives for me, "lovely" wasn't one of them. I've written several stories about my hardships in that school, one published in a UK journal. If it hadn't been for Jeanne Manford, and subsequently others like her, I might've forever held my peace - or, a troubled silence.